Assassin Items

Class-specific items are much like other items. They have a variety of stats and types, can be found magical, Rare, Unique, and sometimes in Sets as well. The real difference is that these items can only be used by one character class, and they can have random bonuses to individual skills, much like the ones you see on wands/staves/scepters in Diablo II. This is in contrast with magic items possessing class-specific Skill Level and Assassin Skill Tree prefixes, which may be used by classes other than the Assassin without benefiting from the skill modifiers.

Assassins have the closest-relationship to their class-specific equipment of any class. Amazons and Sorceresses can use other weapons, Barbs and Druids can use other helms, and Paladins and Necros can use other shields, but Assassins are largely forced to use their Claw-Class weapons since they have Claw Mastery and some charge ups that only work with Claws.

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The monster that drops the Claw must have an Mlvl as high or higher than the Ilvl of the item modifier to drop it. Check full Mlvl stats on Darkness.

The in-game hover speed on claws tells you virtually nothing, since 6 out of 7 are always "Very Fast", and all of them with any sort of SIAS/IAS/GIAS modifiers will always be "Very Fast". Check the actual Weapon Speed in this table to compare their true rates.

Damage Bonus: This determines how you multiply the item damage by your stats to reach the actual damage. All Claws are 50/50, which means every point in Str and Dex adds .5% of the total weapon physical damage in bonus.

Item Level: Used in many in-game calculations. Monsters must be of this level to drop the item, and it factors in when you get to gamble for this item type as well.

Weapon Speed: A relative comparison to other weapons of the same type. 0 is the base -10, -20, etc is faster, 10, 20, etc is slower. Each 10 is equivalent to an normal SIAS item.

Range: Goes from 1 (least) to 5 (most). All Claw weapons have 1 range, the same as most other one-handed weapons.

Clvl Req: A character must be this level to equip the item. No uniques had Clvl requirements prior to v1.08 Diablo II.

Elite items can only be found from monsters in Acts 4 and 5 on Nightmare, and then all of Hell difficulty. Check the Monster levels on Darkness and then compare to the Item Levels listed for each item. The Monster must be as high or higher level to drop an item type.

Elite weapons are designed to be largely comparable in damage/attack rate. This gives you more of a choice in which one to use, since the quality of modifiers and requirements are the main differentiating features.